New laptop for video editing advice

Hackling

I have about 2000 video clips each ranging from 2 to 4 seconds long that I want to combine into one big video. I then want to add some music to play in the background throughout the video. I don't need any other fancy video editing features.

Do you have any advice on a laptop that I could buy to do this on? I'm not looking to spend a fortune. Many thanks.

Ergates

If this is a one off exercise, then it might be more economical to find someone who could do it for you.

flaneurs_lobster

Are you experienced in video editing?

As someone who has tried (as a rank beginner) to edit together half a dozen video clips and produced something that was frankly terrible I'd not be thinking about this (2000 clips!).

Maybe this is the sort of thing that your AI bot of choice can be told to just get on with?

Unless you need a laptop for other things then I'd be following @Ergates advice and finding someone else to do this for me.

outtatune

ffmpeg can automate this for you.

Assuming that all the videos have exactly the same framerate, codec, frame dimensions, aspect ratio and so on then this will merge ('concatenate') the videos together without needing to reencode:

ffmpeg -f concat -i listofvids.txt output.mp4

If the initial videos have different formats then things will be a bit more complex, but still doable. Plenty of guidance online which will show you how to automate this. It'll probably involve re-encoding the videos.

Various ways of creating a file list, e.g. from the command line

dir /b "C:\Videofolder" > listofvids.txt

Adding the music into the merged video will depend on whether the merged video already has an audio track, there are plenty of resources online which will show you how to do this.

ffmpeg will work on any old laptop, the crappiest charity shop one will be fine, as long as it actually works!

DullGreyGuy

Hackling said:

I have about 2000 video clips each ranging from 2 to 4 seconds long that I want to combine into one big video. I then want to add some music to play in the background throughout the video. I don't need any other fancy video editing features.

Do you have any advice on a laptop that I could buy to do this on? I'm not looking to spend a fortune. Many thanks.

As a one off exercise anything will do. Depending on the resolution/file sizes involved it may take a long time to process it on a basic machine but it should get to the end eventually. 

Personally would just try doing it with 10-20 or so clips for now with whatever tools you currently have. Video editing is much harder than most people think and you may decide the result isnt good enough before you waste money on a new machine

Vitor

I feel sad for the viewer watching 2000, 2 second clips!

Have a look at Microsoft clipchamp, web based video editor so the hard work is done on the server

outtatune

Another thread where people spend time helping a newbie only to get a complete blank.